Vendors always get the brunt of the criticism when technology projects go wrong, and why not? After all, consultancies, IT service providers, and outsourcers charge millions, if not billions, so that they can to make sure their clients get the best of the best...

One of Hubble’s four science instruments stopped working last week, NASA said on Friday. Engineers are looking into recovery options, but the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) was not slated for upgrade or replacement on any servicing mission.

We're obliged to reader Dennis Price for alerting us to an absolute must-have for any fashion-conscious and street-hip insurgent - the Kalashnikov MP3 player. Yes indeed, the streets of Najaf will never be the same again once the followers of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr get their hands on this little beauty - aptly named the AK-MP3. Actually, it's just a replica AK-47 magazine, but slap it in your semi-automatic rifle and you're ready to shock and awe the US military with the sheer firepower of your playlist.

Two news stories in the last few weeks highlight a mobile communications dilemma. There's a time to talk and a time to refrain from talking. One person's mobile flexibility is another's annoying conversation.

Storage is an area that has been the subject of much attention over the last few years with the areas of storage management and virtualisation grabbing much of the attention. However, within the sweeping torrents of hype and exaggeration there are to be found some genuine nuggets of potential value. One such pearl could well turn out to be IBM’s Virtualisation Engine Suite for Storage and the first benefits of the engine can be recognised in the TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller and TotalStorage SAN File System offerings, known to their friends respectively as SVC as SFS.

British businesses are unprepared for costs and consequences of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. The forthcoming legislation aims to regulate how businesses reuse, reclaim, recycle and dispose of surplus electronic equipment.

This year's mandatory Windows upgrade - WinXP Service Pack 2 - finally made its way blinking into the daylight over the weekend. But not before prospective upgraders had taken a tour of Microsoft's "test" Extranet and examined some perplexing Active Server Page error messages. This was what greeted readers who followed our advice on Friday, when the "Order SP2 here" page went live.

Over a quarter of small businesses are worried that late payment could prevent them from paying wages to staff, new research has revealed. The study, conducted by BACS Payment Schemes, found that more than one in four firms admitted that they could not pay employees if customers didn’t settle their debts for one month.

Pipex has bought AccentUK Limited - which trades as the much-respected independent broadband ISP, Nildram - in a deal worth £12.9m. The acquisition, announced today on the stock exchange, willl add around 35,000 broadband punters to Pipex's existing customer base, taking its total number of ADSL punters to 162,000.

The roll-out of DualDisc hybrid DVD/CD media later this year could yet be hampered by a German company that claims ownership of the technology if talks between the intellectual property firm and major music industry players break down.

Microsoft has axed 14 admin staff from its UK operation after making what it described as a "strategic business decision". Those affected - most of whom work at Microsoft's UK HQ in Reading - were told the bad news this morning.

Holding a management position with BEA Systems these days is a risky proposition. In the space of a single week, BEA lost SVP of advanced development Adam Bosworth and CTO Scott Dietzen, two of its leading visionaries, following the exit of VP of products and solutions Rick Jackson and senior director of marketing Erik Frieberg. It's a game of management musical chairs for those remaining...

Silicon Valley's optimism isn't shared by the people who work there. According to the AP, area employees are the most pessimistic in the United States. Twenty-seven per cent fear losing their jobs, compared to 18 per cent nationally. Although the unemployment rate has fallen, few new jobs have been created, and laid-off workers have simply moved on.

In a move that recalls IBM's decision to mortgage its future, via an MS-DOS license, to Microsoft, Google has made peace with arch-rival Yahoo! The two giants have settled a contentious patent dispute with Google agreeing to license technology based on several Yahoo! patents that form the basis of their mutual, astronomical recent growth: contextual advertising. Only this is an IBM in reverse.